If the House rejects the Electoral college, then I guess the House itself gets to vote like in 1801. The problem is this could set a precedent where if the House is a majority party opposite from the electoral college, they automatically reject the electoral vote.
On the other hand, the Republicans have a majority in exactly 26/50 House delegations, the barest of majorities. I really don’t trust that. We need to get Trump to 270. The state legislatures are going to be much more easy to sway than Congressmen. The Republican state legislatures in disputed states need cause to select electors without reference to the popular vote: and the SCOTUS or other courts can give them this cause by declaring the elections spoiled, or something like that.
If the states don’t appoint enough electors to get either man to 270, it goes to the House, where each state gets a single vote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_members_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives
Trump would win 26-24. But this is risky, and it would be an absolutely final vote. There’s no fraud possible when there are only 50 votes. You might have some rats.
17th amendment, you’re right. The federalists (or anti-federalists, who were more federalist than the capital f Federalists) fought for the state legislatures to get to vote for US Senators and the president under the Constitution. In many states, the state legislatures established a popular vote system, and awarded electors based on this, even since the very first election. This is sort of a shirking of Constitutional responsibility, but it is in no way prohibited by the Constitution probably as a compromise. Senators, however, were not voted for by the people until the 17th amendment.
But by placing these offices (POTUS, VP, US Senator) on the ballot, the state government is decoupled from the federal government. Instead of the federal government being accountable to the people via the state governments (and the House of Representatives), it’s now “accountable” directly to the people. Whoch really means it’s accountable to us via tye national political machines; not accountable to us at all. Don’t get me wrong, the state governments were and are corrupt, but they are more accountable to us. They don’t lie behind thick walls of bureaucracy.
The other effect of decoupling the Senate and Presidency from the State legislatures is that State politics has lost prestige. All we care about is electing Trump, and electing MAGA politicians. And we should! But really, we should be concerned about local issues first, and the federal government shouldn’t have any say in these anyway. By establishing the popular vote for POTUS and the direct election of Senators, We’ve given the federal government ample excuse to overstep its authority. After all, it was “the will of the people.”
Yeah you can’t redo an election. That’d totally unprecedented, especially since the popular vote method is provisional anyway. What would happen is the whole Pennsylvania election is thrown out, or small parts of it are thrown out (Pittsburgh, Phila). If parts of it are excised, just count the votes that remain. If the whole thing is tossed out, the General Assembly of the Commonwealth will simply select 20 Republican electors.
The SCOTUS is not a “final say”; they are a court that rules on cases. If the Trump campaign sues the PA election board, the Court can determine that the election board is guilty or not guilty of what is charged. So the suits need to be taylored for outcomes in which a Trump win means Biden votes are deleted. We can use this as a mechanism for victory, but ultimately it has to be couched inside a lawsuit. SCOTUS justices are judges, not prophets.
The Constitution has fall-back procedures for the Presidential Election. Worst case, Congress elects the President, and the Senate elects the VP.
It’s not so much the “fall-back” as the vanilla method for appointing electors. The vanilla method is the state legislatures appointing electors. Since 1789, several and eventually all stare legislatures have bound themselves to honor the popular vote in the state. But if there is no popular vote, it’s not even a “fall-back plan”; the state legislature would appoint electors, business as usual.
The House only takes the election when no candidate receives a majority of votes.
No. There is only one election in the law. SCOTUS ordering a new election would be the definition of legislating from the bench. They have to either salvage what they have, or trash the whole election and throw it to the elected state General Assemblies.
The legislatures have bound themselves to honor the popular vote. So they could only do this if the elections are determined sufficiently fraudulent to be untrustworthy. That might be the goal of the Trump lawsuits. However, if he can win them by counting the legal votes, I know he would prefer that.
Seems like it. Now, the PA General Assembly is not going to ignore the popular vote of the PA. PA since the very first election in 1788 has held a popular vote to choose electors. It’s part of their tradition. However, if the courts determine that the entire election (in PA) can’t be trusted, then there are provisions for a re-vote on state/federal level down ballot items, but the presidency is different than all those other elections. The presidential popular election exists at the pleasure of the state legislature. If the popular vote does not exist, there is no structure for revoting: the day is set by federal statute as the first Tuesday in November. Without a popular vote, it goes directly to the state legislature to vote on. AFAIK there is NO legal basis for what to do next besides some foundational constitutional texts, and all they say is “the state legislatures choose the electors.” So, a simple majority in both houses would seem to do the trick.
There’s that many left??? If Trump gets ~63% of these he wins Arizona. Which doesn’t seem unlikely at all.